Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[andrewducker]

Of course, one can define "natural" as "the set of things which can be understood by investigation, hypothesis and experimentation", which will then provide us with "natural laws". "Supernatural" entities would then be left as the things which are capable of acting in ways outside of this - modifying the natural laws, etc.

This would, of course, merely mean that our natural laws were a side-effect of a larger set of natural laws which we do not have direct access to (as the inhabitants of The Sims do not have direct access to our natural laws) - the larger set would still be "natural" to the beings that inhabited that domain, not to us.

I do enjoy that kind of thinking rather a lot :->

[robhu.livejournal.com]

So does someone have supernatural beliefs if they think that there are things that cannot be understood by investigation, hypothesis, and experimentation? That would include quite a lot of things that would not normally be thought to be 'supernatural' (e.g. one off events, multiverses, laws that we cannot in practice investigate, etc).

By extension - would aliens sufficiently more advanced than us (such that would could not detect them by investigation, hypothesis, and experimentation) would be 'supernatural' under this definition?

Usually natural is tied to 'physical'/material. So aliens are natural, but God is supernatural because God (apart from Jesus at least) is not 'physical' but spirit (i.e. non material stuff).

[zz]

yeah, i got stuck on "supernatural belief system", and after reading the comments so far even more so. are agnosticism and atheism supernatural belief systems in this context? i consider myself areligious, but would probably classed as agnostic (no reliable evidence for or against = NULL). i consider atheism a religion of sorts.

[andrewducker]

If we could, theoretically, understand them then they're natural. If they are beyond the theoretical possibility of investigation, then they are supernatural.

And Clarke's Third Law definitely applies :->

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure what the bounds of theoretically means here.

I think I'd say that the works of God are theoretically understandable, but not understandable in practice (due to time constraints, limitations of human intelligence, etc.)

[nameandnature]

I like Carrier's position that supernatural beliefs involve ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities. See Saunt Eliezer's article.

By this definition, God is supernatural, aliens aren't (unless they're somehow not made of stuff).

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

That is indeed a good definition.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

It's pretty hard to know what Carrier actually means [I read a fair amount of his blog post, but it is (this all his blog posts) extremely long and the content seems to mostly be at the beginning], because if he's going to come up with a definition of natural that uses the term mental, then he needs to define what mental actually means otherwise his definition is not very useful because it is either terribly incomplete or hides within it what I suspect is a circular argument (by making the reader assume certain things about the nature of mentality).

Perhaps you're right, and under his definition aliens are supernatural if they're somehow not made of stuff, but I imagine there are quite a lot of people who would think of aliens as not being entirely reducible to stuff (if by stuff we mean the kind of things physicists study) but wouldn't think that that makes them supernatural. Perhaps it ought to - although it is confusing to have the term used in quite a different way to how people would use it generally.

[andrewducker]

If by "aliens" you mean "creatures from a different planet" then they'd be made of stuff in the same way that we are. Why would aliens be any different?

I think that part of the difference here is that we are constrained by the laws of physics. Aliens will also be constrained by said laws of physics. They may well have a better grasp of them, allowing them to do more impressive things (just as we do, compared to our 19th century ancestors), but we aren't supernatural compared to them, just better at working with nature.

God, however, is presumably capable of changing those laws - and is not bound by them. God is outside of, and above of, the natural system which God has created. Thus super-natural.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. My second paragraph is following on from the first.

I mean that aliens are not reducible to stuff in the sense that their minds might not be 'reducible to stuff' unless mentalness is ultimately reducible to stuff, which is completely unknown.

Carrier's definition of supernatural has absolutely nothing to do with outside of a system which God might have created. It's about the nature of mentality.

BTW I think this is a good example of how either Carrier's definition is not very good, or (more likely) 'supernatural' is being used without being properly defined (where really it means 'things I don't think exist').

[andrewducker]

I would consider God to be outside of the laws of nature if I believe in God. And therefore supernatural.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

OK, but that's not what Carrier means by supernatural at all, and Christians wouldn't (or shouldn't) even think in terms of the supernatural.

So I guess it goes to show that the term supernatural is not actually that useful for having a productive discussion as it means entirely different things to different people.

It's misleading (or just plain confusing) in the way it frames the debate, and leads to assumptions about the position of the other people in the debate.

[andrewducker]

That would be "language" for you...

[robhu.livejournal.com]

So if an alien existing in this universe is not supernatural, but the creator who can change those laws¹ is supernatural, then an alien who created the Big Bang would be supernatural from our perspective, but not from his own (and indeed he might think of the alien who created his big bang or whatever as supernatural but again that alien wouldn't)?

So, for you, supernatural is a kind of placeholder here for the thing outside of the 'laws' of the system? An AI living in the matrix would be natural for it, but Neo not being bound by the rules of the matrix due to an exploit (or a programmer on the outside looking in) would be supernatural?


¹ another term that is misleading

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

Seems to be the standard definition of the word:
"of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe ; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil"
"departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature"

[robhu.livejournal.com]

What I'm trying to get at is whether it's system specific. If I make an AI and run it in an AI world I control, am I supernatural from the AI's perspective?

What about the example of Neo? He's not the creator, but he found some buffer overflows in the implementation of his world. Is he supernatural?

So the term supernatural for you does not have all that much to do with the nature of stuff, but the degree of control over a system?

A problem with viewing it in that way is that it doesn't seem to say very much, or at least doesn't say what atheists tend to want it to say. If I create an AI that doesn't make me supernatural, it just means the AI is incapable (in practice or in theory) of reaching out to determine things about the stuffness of the higher level (or prior) domain in which I live. It becomes more of a statement about cause and the inability to determine things.

Similarly "of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe" is a pretty crappy definition. I would assume that you, like me, consider there to be things which exist beyond the visible universe, but if you wrote a astronomical paper about such things you'd be laughed out of town for using the term 'supernatural'.

The second definition isn't very useful either. Lots of things have departed from what is usual or normal so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature, but then the laws have been expanded as we've understood them. So the issue has been limitation of knowledge again, not that the things are actually 'supernatural' whatever that means.

It seems like to me that some things will forever remain outside of the ability of humans to determine (and may be theoretically outside of our ability to determine, if they're outside of our light cone for instance), but it would be silly to say that makes them 'supernatural'.

[andrewducker]

at least doesn't say what atheists tend to want it to say.

It doesn't?

It seems to capture what most people think of as supernatural events - i.e. spooky ones which act in ways we would not normally consider possible.

To go back to a previous comment of mine - we live within a system of "natural laws" - if God, or other supernatural beings exist then they do not obey those laws - they are above/beyond them. To an AI, the creatures which created its "artificial" universe are as Gods. To me, a being which can tweak the laws of physics to its whim, or ignore them entirely, is a god.

[nameandnature]

I think Carrier's argument boils down to saying that substance dualism, if true, defines supernatural things (human souls/spirits, as well as gods).

To me, "mental" means "stuff I experience in my mind", and I'm pretty familiar with that, even if I don't understand how it occurs. Similarly, I'm not aware that substance dualists themselves have a watertight definition of "mental", yet that doesn't stop people from being dualists.

I don't think Carrier has implicitly assumed that minds arise from matter (if that's what you mean by assuming certain things about the nature of mentality), he's just said that if there are minds which don't, that's what makes them supernatural.